Quotes

A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the word you first thought of.

The groovy thing about pop music is that it's wide open. Anything can happen.

It's hard to be married to someone in the business. Carole Bayer Sager and I wrote some really good songs - we had three No 1 hits together. But I think you have to be grown-up, and I don't think I've been particularly grown-up in some of these marriages that I've had.

Elvis Costello is a good guy. He is very intense. When we were working on 'Painted from Memory,' I could always bet that at 2.30am, if I was up and thinking about something, then he'd be up and thinking about the same thing, too.

I've written some really bad songs, which you'll never hear. An example? 'Underneath the Overpass.'

They put a label on my music. They called it 'easy listening'. I don't think my songs are easy listening. I don't think 'Anyone Who Had a Heart' is easy listening.

I'm very lucky that so many of the songs I wrote were written at the time they were. A good song is still a good song, it's just so much harder now to make it exist and last. Do you go into a piano bar and hear a song by 'N Sync or the Backstreet Boys? Is there anyone covering songs from Spring Awakening [the alt-rock musical]?

I never did much of the drugs, y'know? Although I did used to like a Jack Daniel's. These days, it's just a glass of wine with dinner.

Brian Wilson's brilliant but really lucky to be all together, to be able to perform. In fact I think it's miraculous.

I'm very appreciative of the way I'm appreciated in various parts of the world. But I have trouble retaining the high. You finish a concert; it's been good. People backstage tell you how great you are, tell you stories about how this song or that song changed their life, then you go back to your hotel; you switch on the television set, and . . . you're alone. When I lived in Santa Monica with Jane, it was always kind of a downer coming off the road. She'd say to me: 'You're Santa Monica Burt now. Santa Monica Burt doesn't get a standing ovation every time he walks down Main Street'.